The Thunderstorm

This posting is currently being tapped out in the midst of a thunderstorm – with, I hasten to add, the laptop unplugged from the adapter and running on battery power. I have carefully unplugged the desktop and the Drobo hard drive as well. I am not certain if this is a good idea but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

I was thinking of taking the live artillery shells off the tin roof and collapsing the 50 metre antenna as well but this might be a little paranoid. After all, a little electricity never did Ben Franklin any harm. Probably melted the keys to his house a couple of times, but you get that with science.

I refuse to sit in the middle of the room with my feet up on wooden kegs and all the mirrors in the house covered. This is just superstition and silly, besides the wooden kegs are filled with gunpowder anyway. And those old tales about attracting electricity with bowls of water or milk are never going to work – if they did Bill Gates would have been putting out saucers years ago.

I’m sorry for domestic animals who are afraid of thunderstorms. I don’t know if it is the noise on their sensitive ears ( though how sensitive could ears be when they don’t hear you yell at them to get off the couch and you are in the same room…) or the tendency for their hair to become all unmanageable and messy. Never bothered Patsy and Adina on Ab Fab. Perhaps the dog and the cat should be drinking vodka? Any rate as they are wearing permanent fur coats it seems rather a mistake to dive under the bed or couch as soon as the thunder starts because that’s where we store the dust and dead insects. And generally they don’t use washrags to clean up – they use tongues. Ptui, ptui.

If the storm could drop some rain on the big bushfires without engendering more with lightning strikes it would be a help. This time of year is a major strain for the state and there never seems to be much that you can do to the atmosphere to ward off the troubles. Just wait and hope.